By Dee Richard
While all the political pundits were trying to figure that one out and calculating just how it would play in Peoria, surprise, surprise, on one of the Sunday morning political talk shows along comes another political bombshell. This one in the form of an announcement from Ralph Nader stating that he intends to run for the United States presidency as a third-party candidate. I must admit that I never saw that one coming – did you? For a while there was some speculation that Mayor Mike Bloomberg might upset everyone's applecart by taking a shot at running for president himself, and he did seem to be testing the waters on the feasibility of that contemplation. But who ever thought Ralph Nader?If we recall correctly, he ran unsuccessfully thrice before. This will be his fourth shot out of the starting gate.The interesting question is why is he doing this as even he can't seriously think that he has a chance – so why? If he does indeed run, who does he hurt, is he more of a threat to the Democrats or the Republicans, which party does he siphon votes from? Who put him up to it?How much money can he raise at this late date? How can he win without tons of money? Who is his power base? What is their platform? What is he offering that the others have not? Stay tuned as this has all the earmarks of a fascinating power play – just who is going to buy what Nader is trying to sell? I can't wait to dig deeper into this one. Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall of each of the three main contenders when they were apprised of Nader's intention to run? It really is true: It's not over till the fat lady sings and that lady surely has a lot to sing about this time. While we are on politics, one of my favorite subjects, did you ever stop and wonder who really does call the shots in our city, our state and our country, for that matter? Are our electeds truly that powerful, or do they take marching orders from headquarters the same as the rest of us? Who is really in control? Is it the political machines, the party bosses, the power brokers, the huge money conglomerates the powerful military industrial complex, or the lobbyists protecting their special interests? Are all these elections just a means to convince the public that they really are in charge due to the power of their vote? As I'm sure you have heard, the latest rumor to hit the mill is that our favorite Mayor Michael Bloomberg might be persuaded to run for New York state governor rather than president. If Bloomberg does, New York State could surely use some of his business acumen to try and straighten out our fiscal problems.Do you all remember when they instituted the lottery? Wasn't that money supposed to solve our schools' problems? What happened? It doesn't seem to have solved our school problems. For that matter, what happened to the lottery money? Where did it go and what did they spend it on? Do you also remember that a few years ago they permitted the installation of video slot machines at some of the race tracks? That revenue was also earmarked to solve other money problems. What problems did it solve, what happened to all that money, where did it go and how was it spent?Thank God for Bloomberg's voice of reason in the wilderness, when he flat-out refused to subsidize OTB. We won't even attempt to go there in trying to decipher that money mess.Did you ever wonder why the state budget process starts after April? Obviously, it's to see how much money they have collected with our taxes so they know how much the can merrily go on their way and spend. Does the word “save” exist in the vocabulary of our representatives? Will someone out there try and hold the electeds' feet to the fire and try to convince them how serious our fiscal problems are. It might behoove them all to get together and solve the problems, which after all is what they were elected to do – or is that too simplistic an approach?That's it for this week.I always look forward to hearing from you directly with information on people, parties, politics or some plain old-fashioned gossip.I also like to receive your voice mail at 718-767 6484, your faxes at 718-746-0066 and your e-mail at deerrichard@aol.comTill next week, Dee.
